Is it worth ‘boosting’ products at Woolworths?

To check this out, I tracked the various products that the Woolworths Everyday Rewards card “boosted” for my family shop over 3 weeks.

I wanted to see what products were promoted, how much they were, and whether it would be cheaper to shop at a competitor than get the promoted products.

How boosts work

Woolworths shoppers can register for the supermarket’s Everyday Rewards card. For every dollar they spend using the card, shoppers collect a point. Get 2,000 points and you get a $15 discount on your groceries.

To get more points, you can sign up to boost products. Every week, shoppers are sent an email showing what products they can buy to accumulate more points. Shoppers have to “boost” (click on the product on the app or website) to get the points.

Cheaper to shop at competitor than buy boost products

For the 3 weeks I tracked the boosted goods it would have been cheaper for me to buy the products at Pak’nSave.

Of the 35 boosted products I was offered over those weeks, only one was cheaper at Woolworths than Pak’nSave.

While not all of the boosted products were available at Pak’nSave, we substituted with a similar branded product. If there wasn't a suitable substitution, we left it out of the comparison.

If I had bought all of the boosted products I was offered, I would have accumulated 4,850 points – enough for two $15 vouchers and 850 points towards the next one.

Yet those vouchers could be false economy, given I could probably have spent less on an alternative product.

To test that theory, this week I shopped as I normally would e.g., budget rather than branded milk and it came up $20 less than the first week of boosted products. Multiply that by 3 weeks and the voucher offer quickly becomes worthless.

What products were boosted?

Woolworths uses the data it collects from its Everyday Rewards cards to provide shoppers with “customised promotions”.

A spokesperson for Woolworths said the Boost programme aims “to provide a tailored shopping journey that aligns with individual preferences.”

That explanation sounds more palatable than stating Woolworths can track what you buy, how you buy it (whether instore or online), and when you do your grocery shopping every time you scan your Everyday Rewards card.

It can then use that data to target the boosted products it offers to you. The boosts I was offered were a mix of what I’ve bought previously, as well as popular items.

Getting customers to focus on products not price

The problem I have with the Boost programme is that you have to “boost” the products before you shop, creating an incentive for you to then choose that product – rather than assessing the boosted product alongside the other goods on the shelf to see whether it’s the cheapest and then buying it.

I’m very much a no frills/get the cheapest available shopper, so the boost programme doesn’t suit me at all.

However, I could see that it may lull me into thinking about a product or brand name first, rather than the price.

Bodo Lang is a professor of marketing analytics at Massey University. He said one objective of the Boost programme will be to make consumers less price focused and instead focussed on the reward points.

“Consumers may be enticed to spend money on products they do not need, buy too many products, or buy products that aren’t as good, or worse value for money, compared to what they normally would have bought,” Professor Lang said.

Brand loyalty

Rather than saving money at the till, joining the Woolworths’ reward programme is more likely to increase profits and brand loyalty for the supermarket.

As well as profits resulting from shoppers buying more to get more points, some suppliers also pay Woolworths to put their products in front of shoppers.

Professor Lang said another objective of the Woolworths programme is to “enhance customer loyalty” because of how much we collectively spend on groceries.

New Zealanders spent $26 billion at supermarket and grocery stores last year, according to Stats NZ retail trade survey. Getting even another 1% slice of that pie via a loyalty programme will mean $260 million in extra sales, Professor Lang said.

He also said that while shoppers will continue to shop at the same store because of a loyalty scheme, they may not think highly of it, or even prefer it.

During a cost-of-living crisis, it’s likely shoppers are using loyalty cards to try and get their food costs down, rather than having a particular preference to be loyal to one store.

Loyalty card deals are available at Woolworths and New World, and we’ve seen examples of big differences between member and non-member prices.

In the case of Boost points, the boosted products aren’t specials, but a $15 voucher is (eventually) given as a reward for buying them – which may make the products seem like a good deal. Yet our snapshot shows that buying boosted products is more likely to benefit the supermarket rather than the shopper.

OUR DATA was collected for 3 weeks, from 20 February to 5 March 2023. We substituted five products at Pak’nSave for a similar branded product when the Woolworths brand wasn’t available. If there wasn't a suitable substitution available at Pak’nSave, we left it out of the comparison.